Welcome (back) in Egypt!

We thought we were seasoned at this whole ‘welcome in Egypt’ thing, but coming back to Cairo this year has been a bit more of a challenge than we anticipated!  We knew things would be different packing-wise as we were bringing back a buggy and tonne of baby supplies instead of our previous booze and pork products, and we (and the buggy) managed to survive the flight which was a relief.

What we didn’t quite anticipate were some of the difficulties with changing flat and getting settled in.

The first faff of course was actually moving – but we’re trying to forget that prolonged, sweaty and stressful period (!) as we luckily managed to complete that before the summer.

Faff number two I guess has been realising all the things we need to buy for the new place that were in the old place, or that we’ve never needed before.  It was only when we were making a spag bol that we realised that not only did we not have a peeler for the carrots, but we also didn’t have a colander for the pasta.  We coped for one night, but then had to get ourselves to Road 233 (a fair local substitute for the Grand Mall, but we still believe that you can buy everything you really need at the MGM).

Larger purchases have included a vacuum cleaner, as we now have four large rugs and two corridor carpets that will store vast amounts of dust if we don’t watch out, and an emergency light.  We‘ve found that blackouts tend to hit the apartment once a week and know that with the baby our head-torches won’t quite cut it!  The light is pretty clever as you plug it in to charge and leave it plugged in all the time.  Then when the power goes, that triggers the lamp to turn itself on!  I bought it on Sunday and we got to test it out last night when the power was out for about ten mins.  It worked a treat.  When the power went out though we both admitted that we had been thinking ‘It’s a shame we haven’t had a power cut yet to see if the lamp works’ but of course didn’t want to say anything to jinx the situation!

Now on to one of the bigger faffs; the internet.  When we left Road 206 we cancelled our ADSL contract with Etisalat (which was a faff in itself as we had to do it the night before we flew and we had to visit the shop twice because they had given us the wrong change!).  So when we got back to Cairo in August we went to Etisalat to sign-up for a new contract for ADSL at the new place.  Contract signed, we came home ready to continue using USB dongles for another week or so whilst the line was being activated.  Last week I posted about how Etisalat called us after a week to tell us that we had the wrong type of phone line, so needed to request that the phone line was changed from fibre to cable (ironically this would be a downgrading of the line!).  I spent an afternoon trying to do this and a few follow-up phone-calls found that this was not possible. 

So on Tuesday we went back to Etisalat to try and claim our money back (as we had needed to pay for 6 months in advance).  When we turned up at the shop it was unusually quiet and we found out that this was because their system was down – so they could not process any requests.  We decided to have dinner on Road 9 so that the trip down there wasn’t a total waste of time.  We had a great meal at Lucille's, so can’t complain too much, but it was frustrating that we’d have to visit Road 9 again to sort it all out.

So last night, Wednesday, we went down to Etisalat again, this time a lot earlier to try and miss the rush.  We in fact hit the rush and had to wait half an hour to be seen.  They were fine about cancelling the contract, but the paperwork took some time. When it was all over though, they guy said that they couldn’t refund our credit card for the payment but had to give us cash. Except they didn’t have enough cash in the store, so we’d need to come back in an hour!  So once again we have dinner on Road 9 (we decided to have a ‘new’ experience by going to Pizza Hut. Now we have had that experience we know we never need to go there again).  We get back to Etisalat and fortunately the guy recognises us so we don’t need to queue and we get the money back (minus the cost of a new dongle).

The other part of the internet faff of course is trying to get an alternative to ADSL and an alternative to a dongle – the only other option is satellite internet which a friend of ours already has.  I have phoned the guy most days this week to ask him to install the satellite and give us a router and subscription, but he seems a little useless and doesn’t seem to want to take our money. So I’ll just keep calling him I guess until he realises that if he doesn’t want me to call him every day he just needs to sort it out.

The biggest faff of all though has turned out to be getting our security deposit back for our old flat on Road 206. 

We were sad about having to leave our home of four years (longer than we’d even lived in our house in the UK), especially as it was such a nice place and the landlord was good.  We wanted to make sure that there were new tenants in the place, to make up for the landlord losing us, and through school a new teacher decided to take the place, so we were pretty pleased. Their contract was due to start on the first of September and so we felt obliged to pay our rent through until the end of the summer and the end of our contract.  We didn’t want to screw over the landlord and we also liked the reassurance of having the apartment until the end of the summer in case we didn’t manage to move everything in to the new place before our flight.

So at the end of June, a few days before our flight, the landlord and her son (whom we actually do most of our dealings with) came round to collect the last bit of rent and to see the apartment.  They came in and said how sad they were that we were leaving (nothing about a congratulations for our baby!) and when we offered to show them around the apartment they said that they were happy with how we had kept the place and didn’t need to see the other rooms.  We then offered them the rent and mentioned our security deposit. They asked if we could wait until September for it because they had to pay for a family wedding.  We agreed and so gave them two months rent and said we would get in touch with them in September.  We know that a few other friends had just kept their last month’s rent as the security deposit, instead of needing to collect it afterwards, but we were happy with how we’d left things with the landlord.

We were quite surprised that we hadn’t heard anything from the new tenants over the summer about moving in early – as their contract was due to start a week after they were arriving in Egypt and we knew that for us it was important to get in to the new apartment as soon as possible (!) But a few days before the start of term we heard from a friend that they had in fact moved in to the apartment – whilst it was still technically rented to us! We weren’t fussed by this personally, but thought it was a little cheeky!

We decided to wait until after September had started before contacting the landlord about our security money, so that they would have the rent from the tenants.  When we texted the landlord’s son we got this in reply:

"We have received our apartment in a sorry state u have left the key to servant she stole most important things and did not find spoons, no sheets, the apartment was dirty so my mom really sad about this"

What??!!  When we got the text through we were so surprised and shocked – at the fact that the landlord would turn so nasty and that they thought we had left the place in a bad way and stolen things.  It was just such a bizarre feeling.

Scotty tried to call them on the phone straight away, but his call was rejected, so I tried on my number and was able to get through.  When I spoke to the landlord’s son he said that the apartment was in a terrible condition again and that they were really disappointed.  I kept replying that I did not understand how this would be possible because they had seen the apartment just before we left and so knew what it looked like.  He then spoke about the missing things which he said included spoons from the kitchen and the mattresses.  Again I said that I really did not understand how this would be possible and he accused our maid of taking a copy of our keys and then stealing things.

It became clear after a short while that there was no use in talking on the phone about this, as we were convinced of our position and he convinced of theirs.  I said that we were very upset by what they had said and I would be speaking to our school to get the money that we deserve from them.

We were in such a shock by his response that we could not sleep all night.  How could the landlord turn on us like this?  What had happened to the apartment? What on earth was happening with the new tenants?

We contacted the person who sorts out apartments at school by email to give her a run down of what had happened and I resolved to go and see her first thing to see what help she could maybe give us.

When I saw Mona I started to feel a little better.  Mona did, at first, say that the apartment was not in a good condition and that they had to do a lot of work to it.  I again said that I did not understand what the problem could be because we looked after the apartment and she, and the landlord had all seen the condition we left it in.  I tried to ask about what this ‘sorry state’ was like and she mentioned the dust, dirt and things broken.  In our minds the dust was a reasonable expectation – as no one had been in for two months – but the broken and missing things confused me.

She then produced a list of the problems that the new tenants were having with the flat.  This made me realise that the problem wasn’t just between us and the landlord, but was much bigger – especially if the new tenants had had a meeting with Mona and the landlord to try and resolve their problems!  On the list were things like cleaning in each room, but also other things like the TV needing to be moved, that the step in to the kitchen was broken and that the bath was stained.

Yes all of those things were problems in the apartment, but we had never made a big deal out of them.  Things were starting to become clear – the new tenants weren’t going to be as tolerant as we were of the small problems in the apartment and the landlord was having to fix everything for them!  Our problem now being needing to make the landlord realise that these were all actually problems with the apartment itself, not problems that we had caused.

So that evening we took to looking at the old video diaries that we had recorded when we first moved in to see if they gave any hint of the general condition of the apartment.  They did, and even the video diary we recorded at the end of June just before we moved out showed the general condition we were leaving the place in. 

 

So from what we thought would be a small formality of getting our deposit back turned into a rollercoaster of emotions!

We still haven’t had the deposit back, but the most recent update has been that the landlord has admitted that they don’t have the money to pay us at the moment because they spent their money on the family wedding and because they are now needing to spend lots of money on the apartment for the new tenants.  We have said that we can wait for our money, but have said that we too will need the money for our baby (we can survive without it, but we shouldn’t have to take that hit, we don’t believe, as we think we deserve the deposit back!).  They have queried again the sheets and spoons (no mention of the mattresses again, so we think this may have been a mis-translation of sheets) and we have emailed Mona details of where we think they can be found in the apartment, stressing that they are hidden deep in cupboards because we never used them as they were so old. We have left things with Mona for the time being and will see what happens over the next few weeks.  It would be good to get the money back out of the next rent the tenants pay, but we’ve got a feeling that they might even withhold rent if they are not happy with the apartment still!